This is kind of confusing me. I don't know why this is happening, but it is breaking up my program I'm trying to create.

Basically, I have an var array = []. This array is called words. words has the contents of

var words = ["apple","banana","grape","orange","kiwi","cherry", "strawberry","plum"]

When I try to split it with:

var split = words.toString().split(" ");

it splits each word correctly ("apple,banana,etc").

However doing:

var split = words.toString().split("");
alert(split)

gives me "a,p,p,l,e,,,b,a,n,a,n,a,,,g,r,a,p,e,,, etc". Why is it doing this?

EDIT

I don't know why it adds "a,p,p,l,e,,,..." with extra mas per word.

This is kind of confusing me. I don't know why this is happening, but it is breaking up my program I'm trying to create.

Basically, I have an var array = []. This array is called words. words has the contents of

var words = ["apple","banana","grape","orange","kiwi","cherry", "strawberry","plum"]

When I try to split it with:

var split = words.toString().split(" ");

it splits each word correctly ("apple,banana,etc").

However doing:

var split = words.toString().split("");
alert(split)

gives me "a,p,p,l,e,,,b,a,n,a,n,a,,,g,r,a,p,e,,, etc". Why is it doing this?

EDIT

I don't know why it adds "a,p,p,l,e,,,..." with extra mas per word.

• javascript

• What's really confusing you here ? There's no empty chars, but some mas. – Denys Séguret Commented May 28, 2015 at 13:40
• Updated question; I don't know why it adds extra mas. – The Gaming Hideout Commented May 28, 2015 at 13:41
• What are you actually trying to do? – Phylogenesis Commented May 28, 2015 at 13:42
• 2 In fact words.toString().split(" "); does not work correctly, as it gives you ["apple,banana,…"] (an array of length 1). Do not use alert for debugging! Try console.log instead. – Bergi Commented May 28, 2015 at 13:44
• 3 You don't have extra ma ! You transformed your array to a string so you have : apple,banana,grape,orange,kiwi,cherry And then you split for each chars so a,p,p,l,e,,,b,a,n,a,n,a,,,g,r,a,p,e,,, – Martin Choraine Commented May 28, 2015 at 13:45

3 Answers 3

words.toString()

gives

"apple,banana,grape,orange,kiwi,cherry,strawberry,plum"

because toString() on an array builds a readable representation with mas separating elements.

If you split that in characters with .split(""), you get

["a", "p", "p", "l", "e", ",", "b", ...

Notice that some of those elements are "," because you've split a string containing mas.

If you alert it, you're implicitly doing an extra toString() on that array, which gives

"a,p,p,l,e,,,b,a ...

If the purpose is to debug, don't use alert but console.log (you get access to the console with F12 on most browsers).

If your goal is to get an array with all the letters of your words, you may use

var letters = [].concat.apply([], words.map(function(v){ return v.split('') }));

When you use .toString() on a array it returns a string with all the values separated by mas.

When you use .split(" "). It doesn't split anything because there are no spaces in your string. It returns a array with one single value.

When you use .split("") it splits every character. This creates a array with all characters including the mas .toString() added. So when you do:

var split = words.toString().split("");

It gives you this array: ["a","p","p","l","e",",""b", etc

Calling .toString() on this array returns your result.

The first split(words.toString().split(" ")) is trying to split the result of converting words.toString() which is apple,banana,grape,orange,kiwi,cherry,strawberry,plum with empty spaces, because it doesn't find any empty spaces it return an array with the entire string.

The second split, var split = words.toString().split(""); you are not passing anything to split method because in javascript " " and "" are not the same. so when you pass "" to split method javascript assumes that you want to split every single character on the string. basically is the default behaviour of the method when you don't pass anything into it.